Drugmaker Breathes Sigh of Relief

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Drugmaker Breathes Sigh of Relief

Europe's biggest drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline, said Tuesday that U.S. regulators had approved its Advair drug for treating patients with severe cases of the smoker's lung disease known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

The drug, the company's biggest seller, already is widely used in the treatment of asthma. The new approval covers its use as a maintenance treatment for COPD patients who suffer from chronic bronchitis.

The green light from the Food and Drug Administration had been widely expected this month and the news had limited stock market impact, although industry analysts called the development positive. The inhaled drug, which combines a bronchodilator to ease breathing and a steroid drug to treat inflammation, received a similar green light for COPD use in Europe earlier this year.

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Test identifies lung killer: Millions of Americans at risk for a breath-robbing disease leave the doctor's office every year not knowing they missed out on a simple test that could tell if their lungs have begun scarring and dying. Who's at risk? Smokers and ex-smokers in their 40s, and anyone with shortness of breath, an unexplained prolonged cough or increased phlegm.

Just breathing into a little machine can diagnose the nation's No. 4 killer, called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, a term that encompasses the lung destruction of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

But half of the 24 million people thought to have COPD don't know it. Few patients are diagnosed until they've lost more than half their lung function and are left breathless merely crossing a room.

Now there's a move to have patients treated sooner, by getting lung-testing machines once used only by specialists into family doctors' offices – and having those primary-care physicians test every at-risk person who comes in the door.

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Rise seen in large breast tumors: A new analysis shows a small but surprising upswing during the 1990s in the proportion of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer who have unusually large tumors, which are more likely to prove fatal.

Experts are uncertain what caused the increase, but they speculate that both obesity and hormone-replacement therapy may have fueled the growth of larger cancers, even during a time when the discovery of small tumors rose dramatically as a result of widespread mammography.

The analysis, prepared by the American Cancer Society, found that the incidence of large tumors increased by just more than 2 percent a year between 1992 and 2000, but only in white women.

"The great majority of tumors in white women are small and at a localized stage," said Dr. Michael Thun, senior author of the report. "But we were surprised to see there has been an increase in tumors of five centimeters or more."

The analysis is based on the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, a database of cancer incidence and survival data that covers about 14 percent of the U.S. population. It was published in the latest issue of the cancer society's journal, CA.